Citizens inherit an immense heritage of freedoms and rights

The implications of this view are multiple. Firstly, it shifts the legitimacy of the Constitution from the purely formal level (the vote of the Constituent Assembly) to the moral level (the sacrifice of the Resistance). Secondly, it transforms the Constitutional Charter into a sort of testamentary legacy that the 'fallen' symbolically pass on to the living, with the burden of fulfilling it.

Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, the ninth President of the Italian Republic, lived his entire political parabola, which began at the age of 27 in the Constituent Assembly, as a mission to defend the 1948 text. In his political testament delivered in December 2011, about a month before his death, to Father Francesco Occhetta, Scalfaro summarised the profound meaning of his experience as Constituent Father of republican Italia and guarantor of the institutions.

In this paper, Scalfaro describes the approval of the Constitution as the moment when the human person entered the law 'triumphant', no longer as a subject or 'thing' of the State, but as the holder of inviolable rights that the State has the duty to serve. He criticises the 'aggressive' reforms and proudly recalls the collaborative spirit of the Assembly, where despite even harsh ideological clashes, the 'common human denominator' was always found, in the name of freedom.

Enrico De Nicola, the first Republican Head of State, represents the paradigm of the contrast between the wealth of the institutional bequest and the poverty of the patrimonial legacy. His will revealed a figure of extraordinary frugality: he left very little wealth, so much so that he ordered the sale of his home in Torre del Greco to honour the testamentary legacies.

De Nicola's true testament can therefore be said to be the act of promulgation of the Constitution, signed on 27 December 1947. That gesture, made with office pens in an atmosphere of simplicity, marked the passage of the Constitution 'from leather briefcases to the spirit of national life'. De Nicola, with his rigour as a jurist and his sensitivity as a man of the institutions, understood the signing as a collective oath of compliance, a legacy of legality that was to lead Italia out of the rubble of war.

The fact that exponents of Italian culture and politics have chosen to cite the Constitution, or to inspire their own last will, has profound consequences on the social fabric. Firstly, it contributes to the creation of a 'civil religion', where the Charter takes on a sacred value that unites believers and secularists. Secondly, it stabilises the democratic order, as the messages of the great leaders act as a dam against authoritarian impulses.

Every citizen of Italia, each one of us, is therefore, from this perspective, a legatee of an immense heritage of freedom and rights. The invitation that unites these great figures is not just to receive the legacy, but to 'put in the effort' to bring it to life on a daily basis. A task that does not therefore end with the death of the Constituent Fathers, but begins with the responsibility of those who remain.

It is certainly the weight of this responsibility that led to the unexpected turnout, and it is, perhaps, the same weight that always leads most voters to be extremely cautious whenever a referendum concerns the Constitution.